gilding

He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love.

They counted it together—three hundred and twenty-two dollars. It was almost like Tea Cake had held up the Paymas-ter. He made her take the two hundred and put it back in the secret place. Then Janie told him about the other money she had in the bank.

“Honey, since you loose me and gimme privilege tuh tell yuh all about mahself, Ah’ll tell yuh. You done married one uh de best gamblers God ever made.

When he found out how much it was, he was excited and felt like letting folks know who he was. Before he found the fish mar-ket he met a fellow he used to work with at the round house. One word brought on another one and pretty soon he made up his mind to spend some of it. He never had had his hand on so much money before in his life, so he made up his mind to see how it felt to be a millionaire.

Janie dozed off to sleep but she woke up in time to see the sun sending up spies ahead of him to mark out the road through the dark. He peeped up over the door sill of the world and made a little foolishness with red. But pretty soon, he laid all that aside and went about his business dressed all in white.

She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.

The corset gone and the shaking old woman hanging all over herself. Everything that you could see was hanging. Her chin hung from her ears and rippled down her neck

you can’t keep turning round in one place like a horse grinding sugar cane.

even though she wasn’t doing anything but turning around in her tracks.

It made her so glad she was scared of herself.

The train beat on itself and danced on the shiny steel rails mile after mile. Every now and then the engineer would play on his whistle for the people in the towns he passed by. And the train shuffled on to Jacksonville, and to a whole lot of things she wanted to see and to know.

“’Course she kin do as she please, but dat’s uh good chance she got up at Sanford. De man’s wife died and he got uh lovely place tuh take her to—already furnished. Better’n her house Joe left her.”

she plunged into the abyss and descended to the ninth darkness where light has never been.

That was the beginning of things.

After a long time of passive happiness, she got up and opened the win-dow and let Tea Cake leap forth and mount to the sky on a wind.

However, before she went to bed she took a good look at her mouth, eyes and hair.

The next thought buried her under tons of cold futility.

“Ah shucks, dem Admirals is always ole folks. Can’t no ole man stop me from gittin’ no ship for yuh if dat’s whut you want. Ah’d git dat ship out from under him so slick till he’d be walkin’ de water lak ole Peter befo’ he knowed it.”

He was proba-bly the kind of man who lived with various women but never married.

Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.

Could yuh lemme have uh pound uh knuckle puddin’* till Saturday

He leaned on the counter with one elbow and cold-cocked her a look.

She knew by her head that she was absolute owner, but it always seemed to her that she was still clerking for Joe and that soon he would come in and find something wrong that she had done. S

Lemme know when dat ole pee-de-bed is gone and Ah’ll be right back.”

Womenfolks is easy taken advantage of.

Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine.

When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into mil-lions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.

She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around.

Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil.

Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see, and opened up the window and cried, “Come heah people! Jody is dead. Mah husband is gone from me.”

The icy sword of the square-toed one had cut off his breath and left his hands in a pose of agoniz-ing protest.

A look with all the unthinkable coldness of outer space.

So Janie began to think of Death. Death, that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the West. The great one who lived in the straight house like a platform without sides to it, and without a roof. What need has Death for a cover, and what winds can blow against him? He stands in his high house that overlooks the world. Stands watchful and motionless all day with his sword drawn back, waiting for the messenger to bid him come. Been standing there before there was a where or a when or a then. She was liable to find a feather from his wings lying in her yard any day now.

ever since de big fuss in de store dat Joe was ‘fixed’ and you wuz de one dat did it.”

She didn’t know that he was driven by a desperate hope to appear the old-time body in her sight.

Joe Starks didn’t know the words for all this, but he knew the feeling. So he struck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store.

There was some more good-natured laughter at the expense of women.

“You oughta throw somethin’ over yo’ shoulders befo’ you go outside. You ain’t no young pullet no mo’

She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop. Man attempting to climb to painless heights from his dung hill.

“Maybe he ain’t nothin’,” she cautioned herself, “but he is something in my mouth.

“Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business. He told me how surprised He was ’bout y’all turning out so smart after Him makin’ yuh differ-ent; and how surprised y’all is goin’ tuh be if you ever find out you don’t know half as much ’bout us as you think

“Mrs. Robbins, how can you make out you’se hongry when Tony comes in here every Satitday and buys groceries lak a man? Three weeks’ shame on yuh!” “If he buy all dat you talkin’ ’bout, Mist’ Starks, God knows whut he do wid it. He sho don’t bring it home, and me and mah po’ chillun is so hongry! Mist’ Starks, please gimme uh lil piece uh meat fur me and mah chillun.” “Ah know you don’t need it, but come on inside. You ain’t goin’ tuh lemme read till Ah give it to yuh.”

Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But look-ing at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.

Times and scenes like that put Janie to thinking about the inside state of her marriage.

She wasn’t petal-open anymore with him.

Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none theirselves.”

Ah knowed you would going tuh crawl up in dat holler! But Ah aims tuh smoke yuh right out.

Hambo said, “Yo’ wife is uh born orator, Starks. Us never knowed dat befo’. She put jus’ de right words tuh our thoughts.”

Ah wish mah people would git mo’ business in ’em and not spend so much time on foolishness.”

Joe returned to the store full of pleasure and good humor but he didn’t want Janie to notice it because he saw that she was sullen and he resented that. She had no right to be, the way he thought things out. She wasn’t even appreciative of his efforts and she had plenty cause to be. Here he was just pouring honor all over her; building a high chair for her to sit in and overlook the world and she here pouting over it! Not that he wanted anybody else, but just too many women would be glad to be in her place.

Up there, mule-angels would have people to ride on and from his place beside the glittering throne, the dear departed brother would look down into hell and see the devil plowing Matt Bonner all day long in a hell-hot sun and lay-ing the rawhide to his back.

A little war of defense for helpless things was going on inside her. People ought to have some regard for helpless things. She wanted to fight about it.

“They oughta be shamed uh theyselves! Teasin’ dat poor brute beast lak they is! Done been worked tuh death; done had his disposition ruint wid mistreatment, and now they got tuh finish devilin’ ’im tuh death. Wisht Ah had mah way wid ’em all.”

Take for instance the case of Matt Bonner’s yellow mule.

She was there in the store for him to look at, not those others. But he never said things like that. It just wasn’t in him.

She had come to hate the inside of that store any-way. That Post Office too. P

He gits on her ever now and then when she make little mistakes round de store.”

“But now, Sam, you know dat all he do is big-belly round and tell other folks what tuh do. He loves obedience out of everybody under de sound of his voice.”

Starks give him uh job, what mo’ do he want?

It was just a handle to wind up the tongue with.

But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate.

There was something about Joe Starks that cowed the town. It was not because of physical fear. He was no fist fighter. His bulk was not even imposing as men go. Neither was it because he was more literate than the rest. Something else made men give way before him. He had a bow-down command in his face, and every step he took made the thing more tangible.

A feeling of coldness and fear took hold of her. She felt far away from things and lonely.

It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say any-thing one way or another that took the bloom off of things. But anyway, she went down the road behind him that night feeling cold.

She’s uh woman and her place is in de home.”

When Hurston chose a female hero for the story she faced an interesting dilemma: the female presence was inherently a critique of the male-dominated folk culture and therefore could not be its heroic representative.

Us colored folks is too envious of one ’nother. Dat’s how come us don’t git no further than us do. Us talks about de white man keepin’ us down! Shucks! He don’t have tuh. Us keeps our own selves down.”

There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feel-ings untouched by thought.

But when you got big enough to understand things, Ah wanted you to look upon yo’self. Ah don’t want yo’ feathers always crumpled by folks throwin’ up things in yo’ face

So de white man throw down de load and tell de nig-ger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see

Ah don’t want no trashy nigger, no breath-and-britches, lak Johnny Taylor usin’ yo’ body to wipe his foots on.”

golden dust of pollen

he saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.

“So when we looked at de picture and everybody got pointed out there wasn’t nobody left except a real dark lit-tle girl with long hair standing by Eleanor. Dat’s where Ah wuz s’posed to be, but Ah couldn’t recognize dat dark chile as me. So Ah ast, ‘where is me? Ah don’t see me.’

Pheoby, we been kissin’-friends for twenty years

De Grand Lodge, de big convention of livin’ is just where Ah been dis year and a half y’all ain’t seen me.”

The varicolored cloud dust that the sun had stirred up in the sky was settling by slow degrees.

She left the porch pelting her back with unasked questions.

“Don’t keer what it was, she could stop and say a few words with us. She act like we done done something to her,” Pearl Stone complained. “She de one been doin’ wrong.”

But nobody moved, nobody spoke, nobody even thought to swallow spit until after her gate slammed behind her.

The women took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away for remembrance. It was a weapon against her strength and if it turned out of no signif-icance, still it was a hope that she might fall to their level some day.

The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets; t

The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky.

In Their Eyes, Hurston has not given us an unambiguously heroic female character. She puts Janie on the track of autonomy, self-realization, and independence, but she also places Janie in the position of romantic heroine as the object of Tea Cake’s quest, at times so subordinate to the magnificent presence of Tea Cake that even her interior life reveals more about him than about her. What Their Eyes shows us is a woman writer struggling with the problem of the questing hero as woman and the difficulties in 1937 of giving a woman character such power and such daring.

The language of the men in Their Eyes is almost always divorced from any kind of interiority, and the men are rarely shown in the process of growth. Their talking is either a game or a method of exerting power.